James 5 vs 16; “Confess your trespasses to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The effective, fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much.”

How many times have you wronged someone, whether you did it deliberately or not, but your actions caused someone else to be unhappy? I guess in our day-to-day lives it’s inevitable that our actions and words will sometimes hurt other people and sometimes the damage and effect will be significant.

For a while now I have been studying how people relate to one another. For most of us, we find it easier to hurt someone and then pretend nothing has happened and just get on with things as per norm.

Some people take the moral high ground and refuse to acknowledge that they are in the wrong, they actually claim to be the aggrieved party. Some then try to cover up their mistakes and in the process they end up causing even more harm to the other party.

Very few people are bold enough to step up and say: “you know what, what I did was wrong and I am sorry.” Pride often prevents us from owning up to our mistakes and apologising. Our sense of importance does not allow us to show humility or remorse, we find that act of being contrite very demeaning.

As the famous saying goes; a stitch in time saves nine. You need to correct a mistake or situation before it escalates and goes too far and causes great damage. Some doors have been closed in your life for good simply because you did not apologise, you destroy a lifetime relationship just because of pride.

I have seen so many relationships destroyed over pride and selfishness, when they could have been salvaged had one been humble enough to apologise. Yes we all have different personalities and we react to things differently, but decency is a quality we should all possess.

So many needless arguments and pain could be averted if only we could be humble enough to acknowledge that we can’t always be right.

After apologising it’s important to show a change in behaviour, your actions thereafter must clearly reflect a contrite heart that is sorry otherwise the words will have no meaning to the aggrieved party. It may be easy to say I am sorry, but the actions accompanying the words are the true testament of whether you mean it or not.

Be blessed.

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